Maybe you've heard this one. What do you get when fourteen Democrat Senators go AWOL from their jobs in Wisconsin? You get fiscal responsibility, the tools to balance an out-of-control budget and a boatload of evidence that the Progressive Left is prone to violence and thuggery over process. Thank you very much and goodnight. Be sure to tip your waiters, waitresses and bartenders on the way out. You've been great.

Seriously, does anyone else find it abhorrently hypocritical for Progressives and Democrats to proclaim an abdication of process in the Republican's out-maneuvering of them on the issue of limiting – not eliminating – collective bargaining rights for public-sector union employees, especially when their own national leadership just jammed Obamacare down our throats? Wasn't "deem-and-pass" an abdication of "the process?" Weren't behind closed door meetings used to craft Obamacare; meetings where Republicans were excluded in total, an abdication of "the process?" Wasn't the democratic "process" abandoned when lawmakers were given a 2,700 page piece of legislation and less than 72 hours to absorb its content?

Spare me the tears about "abandoning the process"...and if you're a Wisconsin Democrat and a State Senator, dry your eyes in Illinois. Elections, as the Obama Democrats have espoused, have consequences. Remember Mr. Obama's "I won" and "You can ride with us if you want, but you've got to sit in the backseat" comments?

One thing that is abundantly clear through the recent Progressive onslaught in government is this: If Progressives don't get their way, if they aren't allowed special privilege in the process, if their cronies and benefactors aren't positioned to get rich off of the taxpayers so they can fill their political coffers, they cry about "the process"; the "evil that has befallen the democratic process." They can disenfranchise their minority constituents, usurp and waive established rules in governmental chambers and falsely demonize anyone who doesn't tow their line of thinking and that's just politics; their version of the "democratic process." But confront them with the US Constitution – or a state constitution, for that matter – and hold them to the rules as they are established; demand that they take their elected seats and honestly debate the issues, and we get the waa-waa-waa that is Harry Reid bemoaning a threat to a Nevada cowboy poetry jamboree, Nancy Pelosi tearfully recalling "the violence" in 1970s San Francisco and now, death threats for Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin for their audacity to hold true to their campaign promises of executing fiscal responsibility in a bankrupt state.

WEAU-TV, NBC's affiliate in Eau Claire, WI, has published an email attained by Wisconsin radio station Newsradio 620 WTMJ-AM. I am leaving the spelling and grammatical errors in the email as they presented:

"Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

"WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we've had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it's going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records.

"We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn't leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so "high" on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won't tell you all of them because that's just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it's necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will "get rid of" (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel that it's worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!"

It would seem that whoever wrote this letter – along with "the group of people" that are working with the individual – didn't hear or didn't understand Pres. Obama's Arizona speech, you know, the one where he said we needed civility in our political discourse.

And as Progressive and union activists, unwashed and belligerent as they are, continue to trash the Wisconsin State Capitol Building, even as Wisconsin State Troopers remove them from the grounds so that the people elected to office by the whole of the Wisconsin electorate can do their jobs, Progressive Democrats in Washington DC are threatening to "shut the government down." Oh, they are doing everything in their power to blame it on the Republicans in Congress, but, once again, all the congressional Republicans, Conservatives and Libertarians are doing is being faithful to the voters in the last election – the whole of the voters in the last election – who demanded fiscal responsibility so that we, as a nation, don't leave the next generation destitute...broke...bankrupt.

It has been reported that the "government shutdown" being threatened by congressional Democrats isn't really a complete shutdown. The Associated Press reported that:

Social Security checks would still go out. Troops would remain at their posts. Furloughed federal workers probably would get paid, though not until later. And virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, would remain open.

The key word here is "essential." As envisioned by our Framers, the federal government was only supposed to be about "essential services." It wasn't supposed to be about an out-of-control, all-encompassing bureaucracy encroaching into every avenue of our lives. For that matter, state government wasn't meant to exist at a level that caused any undo financial hardship on the populace but for the "essential services." The dream of America – or the American Dream (and no, not Van Jones' Progressive "American Dream") – was about opportunity and equal justice – not social justice – for all. When government hinders those constitutionally guaranteed rights, government has crossed the line; become too big, too powerful.

I for one welcome a "shutdown" of the federal government. I know this sounds anarchic, but hear me out.

First, if the government is "shutdown," as it were, spending would be dramatically decreased; at least excessive spending would be decreased.

But more importantly – and understanding that the "essential services" would continue to function – it would seem to me that, should one of the GAO bean-counters chronicle which services were mandated as non-essential, we would have a workable blueprint from which to make budget cuts and downsize federal government. Yes, it would have to be tweaked but if all of the "essential services" were still to be running, and American government by definition was designed to be limited to "essential services," well...

There is one more thing to note about the inanity of the Progressive Left, their bullying tactics and their propaganda. Do you recall all of the fear-mongering that the Progressive Left stoked-up about the Tea Party, you know, the "gun-toting," "militia," "domestic terrorist," "prone to violence" rhetoric? If they truly believed that, if it were really true, would they be levying death threats to a group they believed to be so violent and so well armed? Doubtful.

Truth be told – and history bears this out as fact, Marxists, the parent ideology of the Progressive Movement, have always advanced their cause through violence in the end. Germany. Russia. Wisconsin. Look it up.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of Terrorism Research for BasicsProject.org a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization, BasicsProject.org, partnered in producing the original national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism. He is a member of the International Analyst Network and has been a featured guest on al Jazeera's Listening Post. He also serves as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is a regular guest on talk radio including on The Captain's America Radio Show, nationally syndicated by the Phoenix Broadcasting Network and on NetTalkWorld Global Talk Radio catering to the US Armed Forces around the world. Mr. Salvato is also heard weekly on The Roth Show with Dr. Laurie Roth syndicated nationally on the USA Radio Network. His opinion-editorials have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times & Human Events and are syndicated nationally. He is a featured political writer for EducationNews.org and is occasionally quoted in The Federalist. Mr. Salvato is available for public speaking engagements. He can be contacted at contact@newmediajournal.us.